


(You Want to Be My) Mirror

by 13th_blackbird



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Art appreciation, Bodyswap, Crack, Established Relationship, Hand Jobs, M/M, art "appreciation"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:04:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13th_blackbird/pseuds/13th_blackbird
Summary: For the Thrawn Appreciation Week 2018 prompt "work of art."Thrawn and Eli encounter a controversial art piece that promises to offer a unique change in perspective.--“The piece takes one hour to complete,” the artist said. “The door locks and unlocks automatically when the time is up. You'll need to disrobe, of course, there's an anteroom before the gallery to store your things. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!”[Вы можете прочитать эту историю на русском языке, благодаряtumblr user @ellinel-velaskes!]





	(You Want to Be My) Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my ongoing one-woman crusade to get more tropes into Thranto fandom.

The Issendi people were reserved, quiet, and subtle. Thrawn fit in beautifully, despite the fact that he was at least three or four feet taller than the tallest of them. Eli towered over them as well, but the contrast of Thrawn’s blue skin and black hair against their uniformly grey appearance made him all the more striking. It was a political visit, reassuring them that the Empire would support them, showing off the firepower of the Chimera, shaking hands — well, the Issendei didn’t  _ shake hands _ , they were averse to touch, but the concept was the same. 

It was different from their usual, at least. Lavish dinners, meetings full of subtle politicking, and… absolutely no opportunity for them to be alone. Eli was looking forward to getting back to business as usual. 

“…heard you had an interest in art, Admiral?” the governor was saying. 

To an amateur, Thrawn’s expression would have barely shifted, but Eli knew him too well. The politely-interested mask fell away instantly, replaced by genuine curiosity. Eli shook his head. Someone on the governor’s staff had done their research. 

“Indeed, Governor Senal,” Thrawn said. “A personal hobby of mine. Collecting, studying, discussing…” 

“Ah,” she said, her bland Issendei mannerisms giving way to what could be called excitement. “There is an installation at Astar Gallery that is causing quite a stir these days. A performance artist of some renown, quite a daring piece—“

“It’s obscene,” sniffed another of the guests. “It should be banned.” 

“It’s beautiful,” the governor shot back. “If you view it as obscene, that says more about you—“

The other party guests quickly chimed in. A whole room of art fanatics. Eli looked at Thrawn, who was following the conversation with avid interest. 

No one, Eli noticed, was actually describing the piece. He wondered what was so controversial about it. Religious symbolism? Sexuality? Maybe it was made of a taboo substance, or it was just too lowbrow for this highbrow crowd? He’d heard all the conceivable reasons for banning artwork during the time he’d worked with Thrawn, who found artistic censorship just as important as the art itself. 

“I would like to see this for myself,” Thrawn said. 

“I’m afraid it’s only shown by appointment,” the governor sighed. “And the appointments are booked for months on end…”

Eli smiled to himself. A highly controversial, supposedly obscene artwork that was so popular no one could even look at it. Nice work if you could get it. 

“Surely someone at the gallery would make an exception for our honored guest—“

“You would shame the Issendei by—“

The argument erupted again. Thrawn shot Eli a distinctly amused look, and eventually turned the conversation back to more mundane topics.

 

—

 

The next day, Eli’s comm lit up with requests from Thrawn, as per usual. Datawork, correspondence, scheduling…and a message. Asking for information on this mysterious performance art piece, “if you have the time for research.”  

Eli could read between the lines. Thrawn wasn’t leaving without seeing this. He dove into the holonet, looking for anything on the artist, the controversy, the piece itself…and more importantly, any connections to get in to see it. 

“It’s called —“ he pronounced the Issendei word as accurately as he could. The language was spiky, full of glottal stops, but he thought he got it. “The translation is tricky—I couldn’t get an exact handle on it.  _ Two-Faced _ , maybe? But literally two-faced, in the sense of having two expressions. I think it might be a pun that doesn’t work in Basic. There are no holos of it,” Eli added, sensing the question. “It’s part of the artist’s statement.”

“‘…the work is unique when experienced by each pair of observers. It cannot be reproduced, only experienced,’” Thrawn read. “ _ Pair _ of observers?”

“Two viewers are required at each appointment,” Eli said. “The artist recommends that they have some kind of connection, a relationship—“

“‘…the pair of observers will be changed by their experience with the piece.’” Thrawn read. “Hm.”

“You generally don’t go in much for performance art,” Eli noted. Visual art was Thrawn’s primary interest. “What’s different about this one?”

“The controversy,” Thrawn said. “The Issendei are reserved, cautious, diplomatic. Their visual art is muted and subtle. This sounds quite different. An expression of hidden side of them. And I have never heard an Issendei raise their voice, much less argue amongst themselves as they did tonight. Something about this must be important to them.” 

“Well,” Eli said. “Our friend Governor Senal is on the board of Astar Gallery. She's apparently a patron of the artist, Vada Trisk.”

“She defended the piece passionately last night, but neglected to mention her connection to it,” Thrawn said. 

“Exactly,” Eli said. “So I contacted her, let her know how intrigued you were, and we have a private showing booked for this evening, after the gallery is closed.” It had actually been a little more complicated than that. Eli had had to alternately flatter the governor and subtly hint that she'd be owed a favor. Being Thrawn's aide had taught him a lot about diplomacy.

“Well done,” Thrawn said. “And you will attend with me, of course?”

“Of course,” Eli said.

 

\--

 

The Astar Gallery was dark and deserted when they arrived. Eli drove the ground speeder himself, wanting to minimize the attention the staff - either the Issendei or the Imperials - would pay to this little excursion. 

They were greeted by a woman who was small and slight by even Issendei standards. Her grey skin and white hair were, unlike most Issendei, accented by brightly colored, flowing clothes. “Admiral Thrawn, I am honored by the chance to meet such an educated connoisseur -- one with an interest in the avant-garde, at that,” she said. Her voice was low and musical, even given her Issendei accent with its hard consonants. “I am Vada Trisk.” She did the little half bow, half nod the Issendei used instead of a handshake. 

Thrawn returned it. “I appreciate your and Governor Senal’s personal favor in allowing me to view the piece.”

“Anything for our Imperial guests,” the Governor interjected. “And you've brought your--?”

She let the question trail off, looking pointedly at Eli. They'd been introduced, he thought. She knew who he was, what she was asking was who he was  _ to Thrawn _ . He stared at her, keeping his face in a blank, polite expression.

“My aide, Lieutenant Commander Vanto,” Thrawn said. 

“It's a rather... intimate piece,” the Governor said, doubtfully. 

“The Lieutenant Commander is a friend of many years as well as a colleague,” Thrawn said. His voice and affect were flat, almost bored. The dismissive tone of a person in power who didn't care about his subordinate, just about getting something he wanted. 

“I doubt I'll understand it, your Honor,” Eli said, letting his accent slip through a bit. “The Admiral’s the expert, I'm just here to fulfill the artist's requirement.” 

They'd used this routine before -- letting allies and enemies alike overlook Eli, take him as inexperienced, unimportant. It fooled the Governor, he could almost see her dismissing him. 

It didn't fool Vada Trisk. Her eyebrows raised slightly as she considered them both. “Oh! I do hope you enjoy it, Lieutenant Commander. I am very proud of the piece; I think even someone who is not a student of the arts will find it accessible,” she said, cheerfully. Eli caught Governor Senal giving Trisk a fond look and bit back a smile of his own. 

They were led through the dim gallery halls, past other works that normally would have captured Thrawn's attention, to a nondescript door with a bronze plate beside it. In Issendei, it had the name of the piece and the artist's name. A velvet rope barred the door, and Trisk pulled it back to admit them. 

“The piece takes one hour to complete,” she said. “The door locks and unlocks automatically when the time is up. You'll need to disrobe, of course, there's an anteroom before the gallery to store your things. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!”

The door shut behind them before Eli had a chance to parse  _ you'll need to disrobe, of course.  _

“I guess that's what we get for asking to view a piece that's supposed to be obscene,” Eli muttered as he looked around the room. It was dimly lit and very warm. “I just didn’t think  _ we _ \--” he cut himself off when he realized that Thrawn was undoing the fasteners of his uniform tunic. “You're actually undressing?”

“I am here to view the piece as it was intended, Eli,” Thrawn said, stripping off the tunic and turning his attention to his boots. 

Well, it wasn't like they hadn't seen each other naked before. That, though, was different. That was nudity with intent behind it, desperately getting each other's clothes off in a dark room: the point was to  _ touch,  _ not so much to  _ look.  _

Eli shrugged and followed suit, putting his clothes in a neat pile. His face flushed as Thrawn considered him, but he grinned. “You're supposed to be here for the art,” Eli chided. 

“Hm,” Thrawn said, with a quirk of his lip, and walked with absolute dignity and confidence into the next chamber. Eli followed.

He hadn't known what to expect, but this certainly wasn't it. The room was mostly dimly lit, with shafts of brighter light falling across it in a multitude of angles. Where they fell, Eli could see…

Mirrors. Every surface--walls, ceiling, floors-- was covered in reflective mirrors. Some were muted and set at odd angles, some were polished bright, some were cut into multiple pieces so they reflected only parts of Eli and Thrawn's nude bodies at any one time. Many of them reflected nothing but other mirrors, on and on into infinity. The effect was at once lulling and alarming, beautiful and disconcerting. 

Eli tore his gaze away from the room and looked at Thrawn, trying to assess what he thought of it, but the moment they fully stepped into the mirrored room, a bright line of light appeared on the floor, clearly directional. As if in a trance, they followed it to the center of the room, where there was a kind of raised dais, on which rested a highly polished round metal object. 

As they approached it, it lit up as well. Eli's heart raced.  _ Why does this feel like a trap?  _ he thought, but Thrawn simply walked forward and inspected the object. He inclined his head toward it, and Eli looked closer. The atmosphere in the room made it hard to even consider speaking. 

The object was mirrored just like the room, with indentations that were clearly meant for two sets of hands, one person standing on either side. Thrawn was already positioning himself on one side. 

Feeling at once ridiculous, exposed, and, Eli had to admit, intrigued, he did the same. They stood with their hands pressed onto the cold metal, close enough that Eli could see Thrawn's chest rising and falling as he breathed. They were surrounded by refracted images of each other's bodies, and forced by circumstance to look into each other's eyes. 

Eli’s face heated of its own accord, his skin prickling with the feeling of being  _ seen _ so completely.  They were supposed to do this for an  _ hour? _ The only comfort was that, if Eli was reading him right, Thrawn seemed just as uncomfortable. 

Just as Eli was making peace with the idea that this was what happened when you both worked for and slept with someone like Thrawn -- you ended up naked and surrounded by mirrors, staring at each other, probably to prove a point about the soul or identity or...something-- he realized he couldn't take his hands off the globe. And as he saw Thrawn realize the same thing, there was a subtle chiming sound, and then…

He was staring at the mirrored ceiling. 

He felt...odd. Not dazed or drugged. Calm, utterly calm, in a way that was absolutely unfamiliar. He could see the odd, broken reflections of himself and Thrawn on the distant ceiling, patches of blue and brown skin. Cautiously, he rose to his feet. And looked down to see...blue skin. A muscular, smooth chest that he was intimately familiar with, but not from this angle. He touched his face. 

It wasn't his face. It was Thrawn's. 

His own body was still sprawled on the mirrored floor. He considered what to do. How strange would it be to wake up and see  _ yourself _ standing over you? Eli felt like he should be afraid, angry, but instead he was just...curious. He touched Thrawn? himself? on the shoulder and watched his own eyes flutter open, register the situation, and go wide with confusion. 

“I guess this is the artist’s intent,” Eli said, spreading his hands to indicate the two of them. “Temporary, hopefully.” 

He watched in fascination as heat traveled to Thrawn’s face. The infrared spectrum was impossible to describe in human terms, a sheen of color and depth that changed with every second. 

“Are you all right?” Eli said. Thrawn was oddly still, a strange expression clouding his face. It was extremely weird not to be able to read your own face.  

“I...am not sure,” Thrawn said. “This is--” He stopped again. “I have studied human biology, but I was unprepared for the practicalities of the sympathetic nervous system.” 

There was so much information. Human senses were not tools, as Chiss senses were. They were forces. Stripped of the infrared, sight was a riot of color and shade. (Thrawn idly wished to be able to visit the gallery like this. It seemed a waste to be given this power inside a monochromatic room.) Unlike a Chiss, humans could not focus on just one piece of information, shoving the rest aside. The mind...it was  _ noisy. _ It demanded  _ attention _ . The heart raced, the muscles tensed, even in the obvious absence of any threat. 

He raised his -- Eli’s -- hands and looked at them. Strong hands, for a human, smaller than his own, but broad. He ran one of them through Eli’s hair and was rewarded with even more sensory input -- a shiver running down his back, the feeling of the individual strands of hair between fingers. 

How did humans stand it? How did Eli perform his analyses in the middle of crowded, noisy bridges, surrounded by color and light, with this kind of clamor in his mind and body all the time? 

“This is extremely strange,” he finally said in Eli’s voice. It sounded slightly different hearing it this way. 

He watched Eli, wearing his own face, nodding thoughtfully. “I’m starting to understand why you’re so good at working under pressure,” he said. “You just don’t feel it, do you?”

“Not the way you evidently do,” Thrawn said, a note of awe in his voice. “I am starting to admire the fact that humans get anything done at all. The human body is…”

“Kind of a mess,” Eli finished. “Compared to this. I feel--” He shook his head, not finishing the thought. He felt light, graceful. Powerful. He extended a hand to himself -- to Thrawn -- and pulled him to his feet. It was like moving a piece of paper. Too easy. He felt a wave of gratitude for Thrawn’s self-control, and wondered if it ever got to be tiresome, always holding back.  

Thrawn stepped closer. Eli could feel the heat of his skin. Their temperature difference was always thrilling, but to experience it from this side, it was almost intoxicating. “No,” Thrawn said. “Conversely, it is... _ messy,  _ yes, but also...exciting. Do you know you see color better than I do?” 

Eli blinked. “Yes, I see that.” 

“And the impulsiveness is interesting,” Thrawn added.

Eli let a hand trail down Thrawn’s chest -- his own body. He locked eyes with himself, and Thrawn shot him a genuine grin. 

“I’m being seduced by myself,” Eli said, mostly just to confirm that was what was happening. 

“I think we still have most of an hour,” Thrawn murmured, stepping closer. 

When they kissed, it was like the mirrors around them -- reflected and refracted, endless. It wasn’t like kissing  _ himself,  _ it was Thrawn in his body and Eli in Thrawn’s, and each of them desperate to show the other  _ this is what you do to me.  _

Thrawn’s hands were on his skin (which was to say  _ his _ hands on  _ Thrawn’s _ skin...Eli decided to stop trying to keep track). Chiss had extremely sensitive hands, which Eli had discovered already, but Thrawn knew even more than he did how to inflame it, taking his index finger into his mouth, dragging his teeth along it. Eli hissed and paid him back by using a fraction of the strength of the Chiss body to pin Thrawn’s arms behind his back, holding him still, exerting just enough force to be on the edge of pain. 

“Oh,” Thrawn gasped. “I understand now.” 

“Yeah,” Eli ground out. “That’s a good one.” 

Their hands wandered lower, stroking each other’s cocks with the knowledge of exactly how to touch themselves. He could feel the pleasure in his fingertips, at the base of his spine. On the other hand, Thrawn-in-his-body was  _ gasping,  _ shaking, moaning, but seeing himself that undone was too much. He’d ask him about it, after--

He stopped thinking. Eli closed his eyes as he came: this is how Thrawn feels, he thought, trying to catalogue it, remember it. It was all he could concentrate on, that same cool focus that was a constant for the Chiss.

Thrawn was leaning against him, breathing hard. “Is this...usual for you?” he managed. 

“When I’m with you, yeah,” Eli laughed, enjoying the novelty of hearing Thrawn’s laughter, even though he was the one doing it. 

A soft chime interrupted them, and the floor lit up again, indicating the dais. “Our time is up,” Thrawn said. Eli thought he sounded a little disappointed. 

They approached the object, placed their hands on it, and stared at each other. Eli considered his own face, lips swollen, flushed with pleasure, and wondered if Thrawn was doing the same. 

Then he was looking up at the mirrored ceiling again. The cool concentration of Thrawn’s body was gone, replaced by his own human inner monologue and flood of sensory information - Thrawn was right about that, he thought. It was loud. He got to his feet and immediately stumbled, feeling clumsy. 

Thrawn must have been feeling similar - he was looking down at his feet as he rose, raising his hands to touch his face, smooth his hair down. 

They left the mirrored room, got dressed in silence, lost in thought, and emerged into the dim gallery hallway. Vada Trisk and Governor Senal were seated on a bench outside -- a little too close together, Eli noticed. 

Trisk sprang up, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Admiral, Lieutenant Commander,” she trilled. “What did you think?” 

“An artistic triumph, Ms. Trisk,” Thrawn said, bowing to her. 

Eli could have sworn that the artist  _ winked  _ at him. He grinned back. 

 

\--

 

It was quiet in the shuttle on their way back to the Imperial delegation's lodgings. Eli imagined that Thrawn was taking in the world through his own senses with newfound appreciation, as Eli was. Human senses weren’t as sharp, as focused, as Chiss senses. The loss of the added strength and agility had been hardest to get used to; the clumsy, heavy feeling of being back in his own body was just beginning to wear off. As Thrawn had said, though, even though Chiss senses were focused, human senses seemed to have more depth. 

“What did you think?” Thrawn asked. “Of the piece?” 

“It wasn’t what I expected. At all.” Eli said, wryly. “Seems crazy they’d just use that kind of tech for art. I mean, not  _ just art... _ ” he added, before Thrawn could start. “It was, uh,  _ intimate _ , though. Like she said.” 

Thrawn made a sound of agreement. “It was a powerful statement,” he mused. 

“Being seen,” Eli said. “Seeing someone else, completely.”  

“Yes, that’s it…but hardly just ‘someone.’”  

“Hardly,” Eli agreed, smiling. He could feel Thrawn’s gaze on him, and waited. 

“You are taking this remarkably well,” Thrawn said.

“I mean, was it weird that we switched bodies?” Eli said. “Of course, but--” he shrugged. “I feel like all you and I do is study each other. Some of my assumptions about how you see the world turned out to be true, and the rest, well…” he trailed off. “I liked it. Seeing things that way.”

Silence. 

“I did, as well,” Thrawn said, finally. “Seeing the world as you, that is.” 

“You don’t think she’d sell you the piece, do you?” Eli said, wanting to break the tension. “Because an hour isn’t nearly long enough to try all the things I wanted to do.”

“I’ll make her an offer,” Thrawn said. 


End file.
